We investigated the effect of the parasitic mite Varroa destructor on the immunological and nutritional condition of honey bees, Apis mellifera, from the perspective of the individual bee and the colony. Pupae, newly-emerged adults and foraging adults were sampled from honey bee colonies at one site in S. Texas, USA. Varroa‑infested bees displayed elevated titer of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV), su...

The development of Varroa destructor Anderson & Trueman (Mesostigmata: Varroidae) population dynamics in Africanized honey bees, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) colonies was monitored from February to July 2004 in Atenas, Costa Rica. A correlation between the mite infestation level and the colony condition was evaluated. For each colony, infestation of varroa in adult bees was measured ...

Swarm intelligence is a research branch that models the population of interacting agents or swarms that are able to self-organize. An ant colony, a flock of birds or an immune system is a typical example of a swarm system. Bees’ swarming around their hive is another example of swarm intelligence. The Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is an optimization algorithm based on the intelligent behavior ...

Juvenile hormone III (JH) haemolymph titres were quantified in adult worker honey bees under colony conditions conducive to either typical or accelerated behavioural development. JH titres of bees under conditions of accelerated behavioural development were significantly higher than same-aged bees under more typical conditions, even before the onset of foraging. These results are consistent wit...

Veterinarians usually deal with different vertebrate species, species that do not differ greatly amongst themselves in their bodily functions but that do differ hugely from insects in their anatomy and morphology. Although the individual honey bee exhibits all essential bodily functions, it is unable to survive alone. It is one among thousands of individuals within a highly complex society: the...

In this paper a novel approach for modelling Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) problem in wavelength-routed Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical networks is proposed. A new idea based on Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is introduced for solving RWA problem which is known to be an NP-hard problem. In the proposed ABC-RWA approach every food source represents a possib...

Innate sensory biases could play an important role in helping naı̈ve animals to find food. As inexperienced bees are known to have strong innate colour biases we investigated whether bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies with stronger biases for the most rewarding flower colour (violet) foraged more successfully in their local flora. To test the adaptive significance of variation in innate colo...

Innate sensory biases could play an important role in helping naïve animals to find food. As inexperienced bees are known to have strong innate colour biases we investigated whether bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies with stronger biases for the most rewarding flower colour (violet) foraged more successfully in their local flora. To test the adaptive significance of variation in innate colo...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, acquire nest-mate recognition cues from wax, the predominant material used in nest construction. Exposure of a newly emerged worker bee to wax-comb substrate significantly reduced the acceptability of that worker to sister bees. Cues acquired from the comb provided colony-specific information about the identity of worker bees; moreover, the effect of comb exposure ha...

The honey bee is a major insect used for pollination of many commercial crops worldwide. Although the use of honey bees for pollination can disrupt the habitat, the effects on their physiology have never been determined. Recently, honey bee colonies have often collapsed when introduced in greenhouses for pollination in Japan. Thus, suppressing colony collapses and maintaining the number of work...